Space heating energy consumption and urban form. The Case Study of Residential Buildings In Turin (Italy)

Recent studies demonstrated how the energy consumption of buildings is composed by two main components: one related to the building’s envelope, systems’ efficiencies, and climate; the other related to the surrounding environment, the urban context and the locally variations of microclimate. In this work the component of energy consumption for space heating related to the urban context is analysed for the city of Turin, in the Northern part of Italy. Turin is one of the most populous Italian cities with more public green but its climate is influenced by the Urban Heat Island effect. The aim of this study is to understand how the urban form of the city can influence the buildings’ energy consumptions for space heating. A central zone in Turin was selected with typical blocks of buildings and their energy consumptions were compared with the characteristics of urban morphology and solar exposure. To differentiate more the urban forms and characteristics of solar exposure other simulations have been made changing principally the: building coverage ratio (BCR), aspect ratio (H/W), and main orientation of streets (MOS). The urban characteristics of blocks of buildings were calculated with ArcGIS (ESRI) and for the energy consumptions of space heating the tool CitySim was used. The results show how the energy consumptions vary as a function of the urban morphology and the solar exposure of outdoor spaces with lower values for medium urban buildings densities; moreover, especially for high buildings’ densities, the solar exposure strongly influence energy consumptions. The results of this work could be used in the urban planning to improve the sustainability of the new districts.